


Foxtrot

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Foxtrot [44]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, The Dollhouse - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-26 19:46:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6253498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nancy is thrown into a cell on Atlantis after she confronts John there and has time to think about Foxtrot and being his handler; written for this serendipitous prompt at <a class="i-ljuser-profile" href="http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/">comment_fic</a>: "The Dollhouse/Stargate Atlantis, Nancy Sheppard + any, reflections on her job as John Sheppard's handler." Set post-series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Foxtrot

Nancy wasn't sure how long she was alone in the alien cell. The marines searched her pretty thoroughly before they threw her into the room and activated the force field that kept her trapped inside. They'd confiscated her shoes, all her jewelry and accessories, and even her hair clips. She didn't know if they'd done that because they were thorough or because they were aware of Rossum's technological capabilities and that her earrings had been trackers and her bracelet had been a comm device. She'd been immediately suspicious when she saw Victor standing behind Foxtrot, but he'd given no indication of recognizing her, and as he had a military background, it wasn't entirely impossible for him to have gone back to what he'd known best after his contract with the Dollhouse let out (after the Dollhouse lost him and a host of other dolls and counted itself lucky when none of them resurfaced). When John hadn't responded to her handler calls, she wasn't entirely surprised, because he'd been without a handler for so long. During his tune-up after Patrick Sheppard's funeral the programmer had imprinted him so he'd respond to handler calls, but he hadn't been assigned a specific handler, so maybe that was the problem.

But the way he'd looked at her with such ice in his eyes - she'd never known that from John Sheppard. When their marriage broke up, it was because it had been programmed to, and Topher had been kind enough to make it mutual, where her frustration at being "left behind" and "kept in the dark" weighed on John's natural sense of guilt at failing to meet his duties (being a good husband). But they'd never hated each other. Yes, they'd had a screaming fight before she said the words "I want a divorce", but they'd never hated each other, not the way John did when he looked at her.

And when he said, "I try to be my best," she had the sinking feeling that he didn't mean it in the way dolls did, when they repeated some of their programmed responses even while imprinted.

He knew something, and it was enough to get her stuck in this place for who knew how long.

She gave up testing her boundaries pretty quickly, because the force field gave her a nasty shock, and she didn't know enough about all this alien tech to risk fiddling with anything. When the first waves of news about the stargates and Atlantis came trickling down through the Rossum hierarchy, there were generally two types of responses: awe and wonder (from the scientists) and fury (from the corporate executives, whose efforts at penetrating Project Blue Book had yielded so much boring information that they'd left it alone). When they heard that Foxtrot, one of their more wayward dolls (no one had been quite sure what to do with him after Patrick Sheppard died, because Dave hadn't seemed all that interested in activating his sleeper software so he'd come home and join the family business) was a key part of controlling one of the biggest pieces of alien tech, the starship-city itself, Nancy had been dispatched.

Get him. Bring him. And the city will be ours.

As it turned out, the city made her its.

Sitting alone in the cell, careful to get up and stretch every once in a while so she was ready for action the moment an opportunity to escape presented itself, she had time to think about how she'd ended up here. She'd grown up in a military family (not the family John and the Sheppards thought they knew - every time John met her family he was meeting another cast of dolls), but she'd wanted to be an actress. LA seemed like the perfect place for that. Turned out LA didn't want her, because she wasn't pretty enough, but Rossum liked the combat skills her father, brothers, and uncles had imparted to her. She could protect, and she could act. Did she want to protect some high-class escorts?

It was money. Good money. Almost too good to be true.

But really all she had to do was sit in a black van, look professional, act like a bouncer if a client got too handsy with the merchandise. Once in a while she had to play a role - business partner, law enforcement partner, supportive friend - for whatever weird fantasy the client had.

And then they brought her Foxtrot. He was so young (and she'd always had the advantage of looking so much younger than she was, than was listed on her Nancy Sheppard papers). She remembered the first time she saw him, sitting in the chair, flinching every time Topher placed an electrode on him. He was handsome, would grow into being downright striking, but he looked too small and afraid to be really impressive or charming. Long-term engagement, DeWitt explained. Ridiculous amounts of money. They'd pay for her shiny ivy-league education alongside his, she'd have the perfect marriage, she'd marry into fabulous wealth, and when he was out on regular engagements they'd send a back-up handler so she could take a break, do whatever she wanted.

It seemed like a dream.

The reality was, naturally, a nightmare.

Because every time he smiled and leaned in to kiss her, she flashed back to that nervous kid in the chair, some nobody from a small Midwestern town who'd signed up for this because he wanted to be wanted or something else that probably could have been fixed with a good dose of therapy.

And she felt awful.

And she hated herself.

And she wanted to hate him.

But Rossum was for life. This was what she'd signed on for. In for a penny, in for a pound. She'd taken him to her bed after taking him to other people's beds, and now she was here to take his mind and his blood and his alien city.

"Sorry to keep you waiting. Deep diagnostics take a long time. You must be hungry."

Nancy was startled out of her contemplation when Foxtrot appeared in the doorway with a tray of food. He approached the cell, and a tiny gap in the force field appeared - she wasn't sure how, he pressed no buttons - and he slid the tray into the cell. He didn't back up when she approached. He was confident in the cell’s security, then.

He'd brought her an apple, a couple of sandwiches, a bottle of water. Earth food. She hadn't realized just how hungry she was. She had just unwrapped the sandwich when he said,

“Don't worry, it's not drugged or anything.”

She paused.

He smiled, that easy-going, wry smile that had driven Patrick Sheppard insane with its insolence but had drawn other men and women like flies to honey. “If I'd wanted you unconscious, we have stunners for that. A bunch of different kinds, too - Wraith, Ori, Goa’uld, whatever kind Ronon’s is. I could've had one of the marines knock you out the old-fashioned way, but that's not very gentlemanly, and on Atlantis, we try to be civilized.”

She remembered meeting Ronon at Patrick Sheppard’s funeral. He'd been even more of a misfit in the Sheppard crowd than Foxtrot John Sheppard, but she'd not thought him anything but human.

"John," she said, keeping her expression neutral, her tone careful, "why have you locked me up? I'm not here to hurt you. I'm here to help you. The IOA won't be happy with you doing this, and with your record –"

"That black mark on my record isn't really my fault, is it?"

Nancy blinked. "What do you mean?" Unlike most dolls, the majority of Foxtrot's memories about being John Sheppard were real. Where plenty of dolls had advanced degrees programmed into them, dolls who were fairly public figures - like Daniel Perrin - got to live the majority of their lives, like their education and - in John Sheppard's case - military service. When Topher had run the diagnostic, John Sheppard hadn't done anything out of character. Unexpected, yes. Against his programming, no.

"Holland was my handler," Foxtrot said. "I was deeply attached to him. Of course I went out of my way to rescue him. Of course I disobeyed orders. Of course the Air Force issued stupid orders, because I was more valuable as an active than as a soldier."

Nancy's blood ran cold. She knew he'd suspected something, but to hear him speak so boldly of handlers and actives was –

Foxtrot's smile remained the same, but his gaze turned icy. "Besides, General O'Neill doesn't care about my record, and he'll go to bat for me with the IOA if they get angry over this."

"John," she began again.

“ _If_ they get angry over this, seeing how Rossum sent you instead of the IOA.”

Nancy bit her lip. “John, please.” Beyond the soldier imprint, he had other imprints who were perfectly willing to kill people. Would he kill her?

He tilted his head quizzically. "Do you think of me as John? Or Foxtrot? I mean, when I look at Ceccoli, I still want to call him Victor, but that's not his real name, so I respect that."

Nancy stretched out her hand, tried again. "Everything will be all right."

"It was all right," Foxtrot said, "till you showed up."

That was the wrong response. Nancy had no training for this, no idea how to handle this. This wasn't supposed to happen. It was impossible. After the disaster at the LA Dollhouse - Echo, Sierra, and Victor escaping from the attic, taking Kilo with them - all of the dolls had been upgraded and reprogrammed so composite events were impossible.

Someone must have told him what he was.

Victor?

But Victor couldn't have known details about Nancy and Holland being Foxtrot's handlers. Maybe together they'd figured out that Nancy was his handler, but –

He leaned in, lowered his voice. "I have to ask, though, because a guy's gotta know. Did you fake it in bed with me? Or was I actually good? And was I _actually_ good, or did you sit down with Topher and tell him all your favorite dirty tricks and have him program them into me? Because the ladies don't seem super impressed by all this. Of course, that might be less because of me and more because of the two dozen other people rattling around in my skull."

"At first, Topher did imprint you with things I liked – taste in movies, music, restaurants, but it was unnatural and creepy, so I told him to switch you back, make you the real John Sheppard as much as possible." The words tumbled out of her. No. She wasn't supposed to lose control like this. She was a professional. She was in control. She was the handler, he was the doll. She held out her hand again, cleared her throat so her words would be steady. "Do you trust me?"

"No," he said. "I don't trust you."

The cold fury in his voice made her fall back a step.

"John, I –"

"You what, Nancy? You're sorry?"

She bowed her head.

"I know why you're here," he said. "Rossum wants the city. They think I'll hand her over just because you were once my handler, because they reprogrammed me after my father's funeral to respond to any handler's call."

She lifted her head. That was before they'd lost track of Victor and the other dolls. How did he know?

"You see," he said, "when someone with active architecture is forcefully imprinted by alien imprint technology, it forces a composite event." His words were calm, rational. "It was confusing, at first, figuring out what was happening to me. Luckily I was imprinted with that one English teacher, you know, the hippie one who likes to meditate? So in between fighting the Wraith and the Genii and being the military commander of the expedition, I learned some self-awareness. And now here I am, Foxtrot John Sheppard, me and everyone you people put inside of me."

Nancy lifted her head. "Joe," she began.

The fury in his eyes turned from ice to fire. "No," he spat. "You don't get to talk to him."

She spoke as calmly and clearly as she could muster. “Joe, I know you're in there. Listen to me -”

"That was my second year of the expedition," he continued, as if she hadn't spoken. "So I've had a lot of practice at this. Whatever training Rossum gave you, you're no match for all of me. Or Victor. Or Echo and Sierra and Kilo."

Nancy said, "Joe, I'm sorry."

He stared at her for a long moment. "You know, the psych major inside of me, Brian, he believes you. The CIA agent thinks you're a liar. Me – I don't really have the luxury of caring, because right now I'm at war. With Rossum." He stepped back. "Eat up. You've got a long stay ahead of you. I'll have some marines bring you clean clothes in the morning. Hope you warmed up your voice, because tomorrow, I expect some singing."

Nancy watched him go and wondered what Rossum had created in Foxtrot and the other composite dolls, wondered if there was any mercy for someone like her and what she'd done, and if there was anything she could do to earn it.


End file.
